As Friday marks the 20th anniversary of “Big Bang” – the deregulation of markets which ended fixed commissions and removed restrictions on the companies in the market – cue outpourings of nostalgia about the good old days.
But not all of those who remember the pre-1986 market have fond recollections.
In one story, written at the time of the 10th anniversary, Fred Carr, who before Big Bang was a partner at the stockbroker Capel-Cure Myers, and in 1996 ran Carr Shepherds, a private client business called the trading conditions, “absolute hell with a wooden floor. You’d come back to the office at 3pm and blow your nose, and clumps of brown wood would come out.”
Euan Harkness, now vice-chairman of Barclays Capital who was a partner with stockjobbers Wedd Durlacher in 1986, recalled a more leisurely working day and a less demanding market: “It was a lot more relaxed. When I started people didn’t get in til 10 o’clock. I get up at 5.20 in the morning now.”
“The gilt market then was effectively two jobbers. You were looking at the UK in isolation. Now when you’re trading any of these fixed-interest markets you are trading in five different economies.”
Another 10 years on, how has the market changed further? What do you miss about the City of 20 years ago?